Retronauts - 721: Episode 721 Preview: Hudson's Road to TurboGrafx-16

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Inspired by the host's recent deep-dive into TurboGrafx-16 and a chance encounter at Retro World Expo, this episode sees Jeremy Parish, Kurt Kalata, John Andersen, and guest Jimmy Cooney recount the wild early days of former gaming powerhouse Hudson. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

This week in Retronauts, be prepared. Everyone, welcome to Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish, and this is. week. We are kind of live-ish, if we consider this live at Retro World Expo, and we are going to talk about Hudson, because I have jumped into TurboWorks, turbographics videos with my video project, and I've been immersed in Hudson, and I figured why not turn that into additional content. It's the way that we live in this modern age and era. And And in a bizarre coincidence, yesterday we were at the, on the show floor, and someone came up and started chatting with me.

And out of nowhere, I go to a lot of events and talk about the history of Hudson. And there's no possible way he could have known that this was the topic of our podcast discussion off panel, off site. And I said, well, this was, you know, since this was a divine intervention here, so please join us for our podcast. podcast. So special guest who randomly wandered into the podcast. It's not often I say I've invited a strange man into my, uh, into my hotel room, but, but it does happen sometimes because, you know, Faye just lines up. So please introduce yourself. Yeah. Hi, guys. I'm Jimmy Cooney. I own a game store in the Washington, D.C. area called Dice City Games. I'm a long time collector, um, started with the N.S and just was immediately attracted to the beat. Um, I've spoken at, uh,

Fest, too many games, and a couple other events about the history of Hudson soft. I did a panel called 50 Years of the Bee in the Story of Hudson, and then I did a panel on the caravan shooting and the caravan in general. So the Hudson Caravan was an exciting time to be alive if you were a gamer in Japan, and I actually think the echoes of it we are still feeling today. So I was really excited to run into these guys, and I said, hey, that book looks cool. And he's like, oh, that's my book. and I recognized his voice, the podcast, and really the Famicom Works and other series I've

seen. So really cool and a little bit of serendipity to join these guys. And I'm excited. I think this is the most underrated developer and publisher of all time. All right. And speaking of these other guys, who are these other guys? I'm Kurt Kalata. I'm John Anderson. All right. And we are going to talk about Hudson because they're cool and did a lot of stuff. And the more I read about them and dig into the turbographics, the more I'm like, oh, I see how all the pieces of history have started to line up. Because, you know, the thing that I, I didn't realize until I kind of started on this journey and even was corrected by a random stranger who puts together the Famicom, Fama Daily YouTube show and has moved on to PC engine coverage, that the division

of labor on the turbographics was not NEC made the hardware Hudson made a bunch of the games it was Hudson came up with a hardware concept and went to NEC and they you know

produced the system together so Hudson you know everyone thinks of them as a game developer like the Adventure Island people and yes that's correct they made bomber man but they also had a history

working in computers and there was some knowledge of computer hardware there. And so that came into play with the turbographics, the PC engine. And we're going to talk about that. But first, we are going to talk about how they got to that point. So we will begin by digging back into the 1970s. It's been more than 50 years since Hudson Soft was established, although they were not Hudson Soft at the beginning. How

familiar are you guys with their pre-NES stuff, if at all? I dream of going to CQ Hudson. Do you want to explain what CQ Hudson is? Yeah, they had their Radio Shack style. Really, it was a store. It was more than a store because from it they launched their development, as I understand. And they made many, many of these early home computer games. But in a sense, you know, Japan has the culture of these camera stores and these radio stores.

And, of course, radio was much bigger in 1973 in some ways. So I feel like a big part of what they were. were doing was they were tinkers, and I think that's something I'm attracted to do, both their love of cars and trains, and then, you know, and I think that's true of many early Japanese developers. You look at Gumpay Yokoy, he made some of the most important video games, but the end of the day, toys, tinkering, you know, the mechanics of it all was important to him. I think that Hudson was kind of like that in CQ Hudson their store where they had computers, they had, they had radio kits, they had repair items, you know, they had electronics,

Small electronics, I think, was a great place to be, you know, the setting and allowed them to kind of brain child as a home base. But, yeah, from when I was a store and an office where they sold and developed their wares and many other companies. And so they became familiar with Sharp and Nintendo and Toshiba and all these other companies. Yeah, Sharp was actually the one that introduced Hudson to Nintendo. Yep. I know some of the early adventure games because there were a lot of other companies at the time that were making them

Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom which ended up on the NES later and two games called Zenniland which were a lot of text adventure games were to search for treasures in an area and the first one was based off of like Disney World more or less

and then the second one goes off the rails with a lot of goofy characters Oh, good character, sorry, and lots of parodies. It's a very funny game. So just to kind of put the timeline in order, 1973, Hudson is established not a computer company, not a game company. They are, as Jimmy said, just a shop. And we've all been to Japan, we've all been to Akihabara, we've all seen like the little crowded basically, essentially like long junk stalls, crowded into spaces where, you know, things just line the wall. And I have to imagine that's probably kind of the overall vibe there.

And, you know, a lot of those seem to be just run by like an elderly couple or something. That's just where they hang out all day, every day, selling people, you know, just random stuff that they need. So, you know, it's kind of remarkable that this company sort of started from those origins and, you know, blossomed into something so big. but like Jimmy said, they were tinkerers, the Kudo brothers, Yuji Kudo and Hiroshi Kudo. And they created this company and, you know, went from selling gadgets and stuff to once personal computers, the very early, I have to assume personal computers rolled out, you know, the kind of DIY Apple One, you know, build it yourself out of wood kind of things. and beyond, they would have been familiar with those. And I have to assume that they dealt a lot in not just Japanese computers, but also import computers.

I know that was kind of a big deal with, like, Tandy and Apple computers. And that's how Hal Lab kind of came into the Nintendo world because they dealt with 6502-based systems that were not, prevalent in Japan. So they had this expertise and in that technology. So I have to imagine that, you know, all of this just kind of formed a foundation for Hudson to blossom into what they became. And I've heard that they not only were selling personal computers and tinkering with them, as I said, but the market was so high, it couldn't keep enough in stock. So they were often buying secondhand computers and then sort of souping them up. And, you know, they were making modifications

and adding things to them, repairing them and, you know, the lateral thinking of wither technology starts to set in as you're, you know, as you're tinkering with these other computers. And I read that at some point, they were the dominant force in Japanese game publishing by 1979,

something like three quarters of Japanese home computer video games were developed and published by Hudson. And they started this, I believe it was a mail order service or something, but, you know, we grew up as guys who might have grown up in the 80s, and whatnot, we remember catalogs and how important they were. Even in American gaming culture,

getting the series catalog was important, but at the time, my understanding is they had a mail order service and these games were not just selling at CQ Hudson and other stores, other camera stores and Akebara Districts type stores, but they were going out direct to customers. And so that opened up a whole gate.

And this is a Wild West for video games in Japan, so people are finding their own path. What's the distribution model? What's the right price? What's the right quality of game? What's the right? volume of game. And we might find that maybe Hudson was rushing things out a bit. I don't know. That's the criticism I heard. I played a few of the MSX titles. I think they're really fun.

Well, I think their MSX stuff came later. I think, yeah, the earlier stuff, from what I understand, was just kind of like, you know, one of the, one of the articles I read in preparation for this said that basically, you know, they were selling computers and as an incentive for people to come by their computers, they, you know, just what a kind of on the side, program their own games and they weren't substantial games, but they would create, you know, these little video games and those would come with the computers. So they would give people like five or ten games alongside their computer. So in addition to buying a piece of hardware, you were also getting like a bundle of games. A little something extra. You know, you buy a Hudson computer or a computer from Hudson and you're getting Hudson games with it. But, you know, I have to imagine that dealing with those really computer systems, there wasn't a lot of overhead for, like, bandwidth and memory for great finesse. So they were probably very functional, but, you know, at best, but that's kind of how video games were at the time. So, you know, can you really judge them too harshly for

kind of falling into the standards of the times? I would say no. CQ Hudson pretty much really became a gathering place for computer enthusiasts, you know, and it was just like the equivalent of Satoro Iwada gathering with colleagues at the headquarters of Commodore and Tokyo. So that was like the one place where people would, you know, Commodore enthusiasts would gather. Whereas this little street in Sapporo, Japan, this little store, Hudson CQ really became a gathering place. and games began to be exchanged. They were, you know, like you said, they were being given away for free with these computers.

And word of mouth began to spread about, you know, these games that the small outfit in Sapporo was developing them. And I think, you know, when you're, Sapporo, Japan, it's cold, winters are brutal, can be brutally cold, summers can be brutally hot. So what else is there to do? And, you know, go inside, you know, work with the computers. play, you know, play games and stuff like that. So it's really interesting how this company

started out by really becoming a headquarters for computers and computer games. And Hudson also began to develop applications for computer companies and other, and other outfits as well. They were really becoming a, you know, a do-all for computer enthusiasts at that time. There was a computer series called the MZ80 K2. It was a micro computer of sorts. And they as the fan culture started growing around these computers, Hudson ended up being the first advertiser in a lot of the Japanese newspapers and that, you know, allowed that reach to grow. So you've got CQ Hudson and you have this marketing. And I think that's one of the things I've always been drawn to about them is their marketing from the animated logo, you know, of the B, you know, to the way they did

everything even in their last years the way their team would go to c s and e3 and stuff and give out more demo discs and have lanyards and have pins and i think the most important thing would be the caravan which maybe i'm not sure we'll touch on in oh we will for sure yeah yeah i mean they really were marketing geniuses and having takashi majean you know um really i have this theory let's call it that he's the first pro gamer if we go back and look at it i mean we're looking at the first guy really getting paid to play video games and represent video games and not just like I'm a playtester. I mean, this guy was good, right? You know, 16 shot, you know, earned his name for a reason. You know, this guy was the best at Star Force and he was the best at, you know, many of their games, you know, and games like Wonderboy that would end up sort of becoming huntsing games through Adventure Island.

I think that their marketing was always really special. And in a world where you start as a radio shack and by, I don't know what it is, 1987, 1988, you're beating the Famicom in sales in Japan. that doesn't just happen because some tinkers are good at programming. They're marketing, their understanding of how to reach the Japanese customer base, and perhaps eventually the global customer base, I think is really, really special. So, again, I'm drawn to it. When I saw that V on a Nintendo game, ever since, I don't know what the first one I played was, to be honest. I'm not sure if it was Mylon Secret Castle or Bomber Man or, you know, which one it was. I really am not sure, but I knew that I started just being drawn to it.

And I think that that's got to be a somewhat universal experience, at least for kids in Japan, because they were never shy about their logo, you know, and they were never shy about. And before the B was there, and there's the words, Hudson, the font they used, you know, you would see it on these Japanese games, which I own some. And, you know, some of them are cassettes, you know, some of them are floppies, some of them look more like the cartridges we'd know later. And, of course, the B card, which had its iterations on both the MSX and the PC engine and turbographics, you know, the Hugh card or the B card. just, it's really special. There were something they were carving out that I just think felt different, at least to the other games I've seen in the other companies I've seen at the time. So, yeah, their first outreach internationally was in England.

In England, interesting. In the UK, they actually, in the early 1980s, it's, it was either between, I would say it's between 1980 to 1982. They, they actually did go over. to England. They went over to London, and they did set up a table at one of the computer conventions. That's so cool. There. And they began putting out stuff for the, putting out, bringing their games over to the MSX. And actually, where you get Eric and the Floaters. Yeah. Famously. It sounds like, Eric and the Floater sounds like a bad band name. Ladies and gentlemen,

Eric and the Floters. But they actually, if you go on Moby games and go into one of their early, early MSX games, you will see their name Hudson Soft on the cassette packaging and a London address. They actually at one point had a London outfit. And then a company, which really does not have a lot of background information of, called Kuma Computers, also began releasing publishing stuff for the MSX. And then they set up a deal with Sinclair to distribute their games over there in the early 1980s. I'm going to say, you know, 82, 83, you know, according to my notes, they were distributing games on the MSX in the UK as early as 1984, driller tanks for the MSX, and then

Kuma Computers distributed titles like Eric and the Floaters, and binary land. Classic. Yeah, Kuma Computers was big. based on a place called Pangmore, Berkshire, Pangborn, Berkshire, England, and then Sinclair research would distribute titles like Cannonball for the ZX Spectrum as early as 1984 as well. And that culture, the English sort of microcomputer culture, it has parallels to Japan that I won't say didn't exist in America, but each culture was different, right? And the fan base in England for these, like the Sinclair, you know, it was wild. I mean, from what I understand

the people I've interacted with, I had a cousin from Ireland who grew up in England, and it was just so different. You know, he was into these home computers and game gear. It was like we were, you know, two ships crossing in the night. He'd come over on Christmas, and we'd have a Nintendo and a Game Boy, and he'd have a game gear and be talking about, you know,

his ZX or whatever. It's just like, and I think that that computer enthusiast culture, I can see that taking off. And the MSX, we kind of missed. I mean, I didn't own one in two. until, I don't know, 10 years ago. You know, it wasn't very popular in America. We are long overdue for a Hudson Soft compilation.

Absolutely. It would be great to play for someone to put together an awesome compilation, work with Konami, the current owners of Hudson Soft IP, and put together a computer game compilation of some of those early games. There's a submarine game, a zombie game, a firefighter game. I played little bits of them here and there. They're kind of pick up and play stuff, you know. Not quite the genius of Donkey Kong and Sugar Miamoto,

but it's very in that element. If you like those type of games, it's worth picking them up and playing them. This has been a preview of a patron-exclusive Retronauts episode. If you enjoy what you've heard so far, the great news is that you can hear the rest of this episode by going to Patreon.com slash Retronauts and subscribing to the show at the $5 a month or higher levels. Not only will you be able to hear this full episode, but you'll have instant access to hundreds of other podcasts, mini-colums, and more. It's the best deal in internet entertainment, patreon.com slash retronauts.

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